I spent the weekend hiking, watching movies, and getting acquainted with my new Acer AspireONE netbook...

Mott's Run was a nice little hike. 3 miles and reasonably well cared for, although there were a handful of fallen trees that had not been cleared. The only point where this was a real issue was on the short spur out to the Old Silo. The spur was not marked, which I found strange because there were plenty of signs marking other divergents off the main trail. I think I was pretty sure where the spur was, but there was a fallen tree and a caution ribbon tied off to the tree marking where the spur began. I thought better of trying to make it, particularly since I had just discovered the sole blow-out on my right hiking boot. I may venture back to the area as the park office itself rents out john boats and even motors if desired, so I may try and get a group together to head out there for a day of boating.

I spent most of the rest of the weekend catching back up on movies after a short NetFlix hiatus. I've been watching the Die Hard series on the Blu-Ray box set I bought earlier this year. I've been through Die Hard, Die Hard 2, and Die Hard with a Vengeance. I also watched the third disc of Season 1 of The Tudors, and started Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children tonight. The latter is as strange and convoluted a story as is present in a lot of Japanese created video games. Unless things get clearer, this film is headed for a one or two star rating in my NetFlix profile. I always try to support video game based movies, and I have been trying to get over my inherent disinterest in Final Fantasy canon this year. However, a game movie should not require you to have played the games in order to make sense out of the movie.

My best leisure time return on investment has been received from setting up and using my Acer AspireONE, which arrived last Wednesday. The little lappy that could is a pretty decent joy to work on. Let me start off with some of the things I have not enjoyed.

I tend to gig the MacBook Pro for its inordinately large palm rests. In sharp contrast are the palm-rests of the AspireOne, which, in order to keep its size down, are virtually non-existent. I have also had a few issues which I can only suspect are driver or OS based. The major one is that I can not see my new Linksys DNS-343 NAS from the One's network interface. I can see every other computer on the network, and I have tried disabling any firewalls that are running, including the Windows firewall. No joy. In most cases, on various PCs with various operating systems, I can always see the drives in the NAS via My Network places, though in most instances it is not until after I run the Easy Setup utility that I can map the drive to the My Computer zone and actually see the sizes of the hard drives. But on the AspireONE I can not see the drives at all. I'll be using my network access to other PCs and the Maxtor One Touch mini 100GB drive as a work around. There is also a glitch with the SYSTRAY, as when I enable certain icons to be displayed in the SYSTRAY, they do not always appear. The one that that has a noticeable impact is the Power Status icon, which will prevent me from seeing the ONE's battery status if I can not get it working consistently. It appeared tonight after several attempts at toggling it off and back on via the Windows Control panel. Hopefully it will stick around. Another minor irritant is that when you use the FN key to raise and lower screen brightness, you get no indication of the brightness level on the screen, so you just have to keep hitting the up and down brightness keys to be sure you have set the screen to minimum or maximum brightness.

All of these issues are relatively minor for the added capability the One provides in my kits of available travel devices, namely, a full function PC in a trim package that has a full keyboard. I have all of my custom apps installed, as well as all of my MP3 files loaded. I do not intend to use this machine as an iTunes authorized PC, so it is just the MP3s loaded now, which is the same as I have the COMPAL IFL-90, Toshiba M305, and Samsung Q1 configured. The Atom processor is reasonably capable, although I do get some latency when I try to multitask with Windows Media Player running. I have also not yet watched any video on it yet, so reports on that capability will come later. I have spent several hours with it camped out on the couch, mostly doing research on the Tudor dynasty in conjunction with my viewing of the Showtime original series. I have MS Office, including FrontPage, loaded as well, but have yet to actually make any changes to the main site with the One.

It is also a fingerprint magnet, especially on the lid. Prints do come off with a meshed screen-cloth, though. The speakers are plenty load while camped out directly in front of the screen, which is wonderfully bright. There was a small amount of crapware loaded. While it had to be removed, it was nowhere near the volume of goofy apps that were installed on either the GateWay FX or the Toshiba M305.

This is going to be a great PC for travel, and will complement the Gateway well when that machine's bulk will not allow me to pull it out on a plane. I think this is the start of a beautiful relationship.
- Vr/Zeuxidamas.>>